A slow smirk crept onto his lips. "You remember me." His voice was smooth, almost casual—yet something darker coiled beneath it. "Good." He let the word linger, savoring it like a long-awaited victory. "You were never meant to be his." The certainty in his tone sent a chill through her. "I've come to take you back." No recognition of the years she had spent away. No regard for the life she had built. Just the cold certainty that, in his eyes, she had never belonged to herself.
Xiu Yan's breath hitched, but she forced calm, her voice a mix of fear and defiance. "Where is my husband?" The words hung between them, fragile but steady—a line in the sand that would decide her fate.
Hyun Yeol's smile faltered, repced by a darker shadow in his gaze. His grip tightened around her wrists, a cruel reminder of her lost control.
"What husband?" His voice dropped to a growl, heavy with certainty. "You've always been mine. From the moment I id eyes on you." His grip tightened, imprinting his twisted cim on her skin, his eyes burning with the belief that nothing could erase his hold.
His words wrapped around her, slow and deliberate, tightening like a noose. Obsession burned in his eyes—not passion, not longing, but something far more dangerous. In his mind, her marriage, her defiance—everything she had fought for—was nothing but an illusion. A brief dream. A borrowed freedom he had come to recim.
"You'll never be his," he hissed, the words ced with a dark, twisted promise. "Only I can make you whole again. Without me, you're nothing." There was a subtle edge to his voice, like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. His obsession was so deep that it bordered on madness, and she could hear it in the raw desperation of his words.
Xiu Yan shuddered, fury and helplessness tangling in her chest like barbed wire. Her breath hitched, but she forced the words out, her voice raw, unsteady. "Leave me alone." But his presence pressed in, a force that stole the air from her lungs, wrapping around her like an iron shroud.
Hyun Yeol released her wrists just enough to twist her body against his. His fingers brushed her neck, cold and unnerving, sending a tremor down her spine.
"Do you remember when we almost..." His voice softened, but the malice was unmistakable, wrapped in the sickening sweetness of a twisted memory. "Before your brother-in-w stopped us? We could've had everything. We could've been happy—if only you hadn't fought so hard against me." He let the words hang in the air, savoring the thought that she might have belonged to him, that she still could.
Memories rose, unbidden. Unrelenting. They pressed against her chest, winding around her ribs, constricting like a serpent. She tried to shove them away, force them back into the past where they belonged. But they refused. They slipped through the cracks, whispered through the silence, pulling her back into the nightmare she thought she had outrun.
"Let go..." Her voice faltered, the words coming out choked, trembling with something deeper than fear—a tremor of lost hope, of a woman who had fought so long to be free. She could feel herself slipping away from the person she once was, trapped in this nightmare of his making.
"You'll carry my children now," he decred, each word dripping with malice. "No one else will touch you."
The words struck like a blow, suffocating her with each sylble. She wasn't a woman to be loved—she was a prize, a thing to be owned.
An hour ter, Hyun Yeol stood over her, adjusting his robes with methodical ease, as if sealing the final act of an inevitable conquest. His gaze swept over Xiu Yan's still form, but there was no warmth in it—only the cold assessment of ownership. She was no longer a woman. Just a possession recimed.
But something in the air had changed. He knew it, felt it in the silent space between them. A promise had been broken. The woman he had tried to cim was slipping through his grasp, and he couldn't quite understand why the victory left such a bitter taste in his mouth.
"You're still beautiful," he murmured, his fingers brushing her exposed thigh, icy like death. "If you carried his child, I'd make sure it dies with him. But you'll give me heirs. You belong to me."
The air thickened with his words, suffocating even in silence. His touch was deliberate, cold, possessive—marking her, ciming her again as nothing more than an object. The room hummed with the tension of his twisted promise.
Then—air. A breath. A spark. Fury, long smothered beneath fear, ignited sharp and blinding in her chest. Her eyes snapped open, alight with something Hyun Yeol had not accounted for.
"Die, monster!" Xiu Yan's scream tore through the air, her voice hoarse with rage and desperation. Her trembling fingers grasped for the sword she'd dropped, but her limbs felt leaden, sluggish. The room swayed around her, her vision dimming at the edges, but she forced herself forward.
Hyun Yeol moved with cruel ease, sidestepping her strike as if it were nothing. She lunged again—wild, desperate—but her strength was failing. The weight of exhaustion cwed at her, dragging her down.
Then—a glint of steel.
Her fingers closed around the dagger at his belt. The serpent-eating-crown insignia fshed in the dim light. Anke's dagger. The realization struck like a thundercp. Proof. Proof of his murder, of his crime, of everything. Fury and horror crashed into her at once.
A snarl tore from her throat as she drove the bde toward his heart.
A blur. A sharp twist.
Pain splintered through her wrist. The dagger skidded from her grasp, cttering against the floor.
Once. Twice. Silence.
Cold seeped into her bones, deeper than before. The fight bled out of her, slipping away with the bde that had held her st chance.
Hyun Yeol exhaled slowly, pressing a hand to the shallow cut on his side. His gaze lowered to her, dark, unreadable.
For Xiu Yan, the war was over.
And she had lost.
The cold seeped in, slow but relentless. It numbed her fingers, then her arms, until all that remained was an emptiness in her chest. Her breath faltered, shallow, like a flicker in the dark. Her vision darkened, shadows swallowing the flickering light.
She crumpled, her body folding as if the very air had betrayed her. The floor was unforgiving beneath her, the chill of it seeping through her skin. She gasped, but the air felt thin, distant.
Above her, Hyun Yeol stood motionless, his breath uneven. The iron certainty in his gaze wavered, his fingers twitching at his sides. He had won. Yet, in this moment, he had never felt further from victory.
"Hae-ju..." His voice barely escaped him, a ghost of itself. He knelt beside her, his hands hesitating—uncertain, trembling—as if afraid to touch what he had just destroyed. His mind screamed at him, cwing at the edges of reason. This wasn't supposed to feel like this. He had spent years weaving fate, carving a path where she would be his, no matter what. Yet now—
She was slipping away. And for the first time, he realized he had never truly held her at all.
Her fading gaze met his. Pale, bloodless lips parted one st time, the words slipping out in a whisper: "You'll never have me... not in this life... or the next..."
Final. Absolute. A wound that would never heal.
Hyun Yeol's chest clenched, her final words slicing through him with the force of an unseen bde. He reached for her, but the warmth was already fading, slipping through his fingers like water. Her body y still, but her defiance lingered, triumphant even in death.
"No..." The word was strangled, empty. His hands, stained with her warmth, now held only cold silence.
Tears burned his cheeks—hot, unfamiliar, unwelcome. He had built his world around her, bent fate to his will, only for it to slip away. She had denied him, and now, in the wake of his victory, he was left with nothing. Her body y cold in his arms, and the world, once consumed by obsession, felt dark and hollow. For the first time, Hyun Yeol truly felt lost.
"I promise I'll be good to you... I swear it..." His voice broke, raw and desperate. But Xiu Yan didn't answer. She was gone, and Hyun Yeol was left alone, trembling, his world shattered by the very grief he had never allowed himself to feel.
????????????????????????????????????????
Hyun Yeol strode through the silent corridors, each footfall a measured beat against the growing storm in his chest. The emptiness around him stretched, vast and unrelenting, a mirror to the void she had left behind. Grief coiled within him, relentless, whispering that no matter how far he walked, it would never loosen its grip. Thoughts of her—a memory of warmth now lost—flooded his mind, pressing on him with every step. He had to confront this. Betrayal lingered in the air like smoke, choking him with its bitterness. His heart hammered, but he forced himself to breathe deeply, fighting to silence the chaos within.
When he reached his chamber door, he paused. The silence felt heavy—suffocating. He drew in a sharp breath, as though bracing for something worse. He pushed the door open, eyes falling on Eunuch Lee, who stood motionless, his back rigid. The tremble in his hands betrayed the calm fa?ade.
"Your Majesty," Eunuch Lee murmured, his voice carrying the weight of their shared grief.
Hyun Yeol's gaze drifted to the window, the flickering candlelight barely cutting through the darkness. His hands balled into fists, nails digging deep into his palms, the sharp pain momentarily dulling the rush of memories—her ughter, her warmth, now just ghosts in the silence. Finally, his voice, rough and strained, broke through the stillness.
"The search for the Crown Princess is over... She's dead."
The words hung, suffocating the air. Hyun Yeol stood still, staring into the abyss outside, his breath ragged with sorrow.
Eunuch Lee's fingers paused on the scroll, his gaze fleeting to the door, before he cleared his throat, his voice thick with sympathy.
"The Crown Princess... Did the Ming...?" he asked, hesitating.
Hyun Yeol exhaled sharply, the bitterness cwing at him. "Yes. They killed her," he whispered, his words like acid on his tongue.
He faltered, swallowing against the lump in his throat. The image of the Crown Princess, her trusting smile, fshed before his eyes. The memory weighed him down like an anchor, pulling him into the depths of his guilt. He breathed out sharply, forcing himself to focus. "You tried. I failed," he murmured, the words an admission he couldn't take back, as though saying them could somehow lessen the burden.
The guilt pressed on him like a physical weight, but he forced himself still, locking away his turmoil beneath a thin mask of calm. He couldn't afford grief—not now, not in front of Eunuch Lee.
Eunuch Lee didn't respond immediately, his gaze lingering, sensing the storm beneath Hyun Yeol's composed exterior. "The Ming will pay," Hyun Yeol said, his voice hollow, even the promise feeling empty.
Eunuch Lee nodded, his voice steady despite the shared sorrow. "We will act swiftly, Your Majesty."
He turned to leave, but before stepping out, his eyes flickered back at Hyun Yeol, an unspoken understanding of their shared pain.
As Eunuch Lee reached the door, Hyun Yeol's voice faltered. "Send for an artist... and the Queen's brother. Have them create a portrait of Hae-ju—how she once was. Bright. Beautiful."
Alone, Hyun Yeol sank into the dim room, breath shallow, his fingers clutching the armrest as if to anchor himself. A tremor ran through his hands, his composure unravelling, slipping away like sand through his fingers. His wife was gone. His fault. The thought lodged in his throat, thick and suffocating. He closed his eyes, but the weight of it all pressed down. Vengeance, once a fire in his veins, now felt cold—distant, meaningless.
He turned to the window, seeking soce, but the cold air offered none. The room closed in around him, too small, too close. He understood, at st—no matter how much he tried to bury himself in anger, he could not escape the grief. There was no release. Only walls closing in.
The silence pressed on him as he walked through the empty halls, the cold stone underfoot providing no comfort. The night felt oppressive, as though the very air mourned with him. And still, he could not escape the absence of her.
Grief thickened the air, suffocating and inescapable. The Queen sat still, her sorrow rising like a tide, drawn from the weight of his suffering. The loss of Hae-ju pressed down on her, a new, raw wound unlike anything she had felt before. The emptiness in the room mirrored the chasm between them—and within her. Hae-ju was gone, but it was her husband who had driven the knife. The grief, once a constant ache, now felt like a jagged bde lodged deep in her chest.
Her hand moved mechanically, dipping the quill into ink, her strokes deliberate. The words she wrote were meant for one who could understand them: a message. A final farewell. She sealed the letter with a heavy heart, the weight pressing down on her chest like a stone, to her brother, Do-hyun.
